No Choice At All
by Marvelicious
Summary: "How long do you think it'll take you to burn out without the Morrigan here to hold your hand?" The memory lingers on every inch of his body, won't ever leave his head, and Baphomet knows he's headed towards the point of no return. So be it. Post-Issue 10.
1. Chapter 1

The bar is dingy and dimly lit, and Baphomet might as well be anonymous, sequestered off in his corner. It's not the kind of place the rest of the pantheon would ever be caught dead in - and since he'd rather not be caught at all, that serves Baphomet's purposes just fine.

Some half-rate band does a mic check from the dilapidated stage and the fuzz of their guitars catches on his skin, makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle with every shitty chord that crackles to life over the speaker.

He tries to ignore it.

Turn it off. Tune it out. Choke back another shot and try to take that burn deep enough.

He'd start a brawl if he thought it'd help, but what's igniting in his veins at the sight of a microphone isn't going away that easy. It weighs on his tongue, sticks in his throat. The compulsion tears at him, cheap whiskey boiling off Baphomet's glass from the heat coming off his skin.

He needs these people to know who he is, needs them to _see_ him.

He won't be okay until he can get a rise out of them - all the dirtbags and junkies here to get pissed and fuck each other up, all the fucking pondscum and the trash of the world - make them witness. It doesn't matter that there's barely a hundred people in the place. They should be grateful to bear his terror.

And Baphomet can't fight back the impulse, no matter how fucking suicidal it is: be heard, be known, be made _real_ again. Be divine, or be destroyed by it. The crushing weight bears down on him and makes Baphomet feel about a thousand feet tall all at the same time, barely clinging to his own body.

Fuck it, fuck it - he stares down at the bar, at the glass shimmering in his hands - useless to fight the fire but he tries.

"You okay, kid?" the bartender asks, leaning over the bar and into his space. Baphomet jerks his head up and glares daggers - _I'm your worst fucking nightmare, pal_ \- fire leaking from his mouth, sparking in his eyes. He laughs humorlessly as the man stumbles back, eyes wide and clutching at his chest. Kicks over his stool as he stands and turns to face the stage.

"Clear the stage, dickless," he announces, voice echoing unearthly loud above the din "it's time for some real music."

The singer drops the mic when he sees Baphomet standing there with flames at hand, and more than one person goes ducking for cover at the resulting boom from the speakers. It's deadly quiet for a split second, and then the hiss of whispered conversation steals across the room with an urgent buzzing - lights him right the fuck up.

Baphomet grins to show his fangs, and slides his shades into place. He's the baddest motherfucker in this place; feels like a fucking animal. And it's never been so obvious that he's on a hair trigger - no one gets in his way or tries to stop him as he stalks towards the front of the room, leaving scorch marks in his wake as he takes the stage.

One word catches over and over - flits around the place in equal reverence as disgust.

 _Godkiller._

It'll wreck him or he can own it, embrace that determinedly fucked up piece of him that does what it has to and damn the consequences. The memory of it lingers on every inch of his body, won't ever leave his head, and Baphomet knows he's headed towards that point of no return: be who they want, who they despise - be their ruthless Godkiller - or collapse into tears and self-loathing, just some frightened fucking kid who can't stop what he's begun.

No choice at all.

At least half the crowd hates him, maybe more. Baphomet can't blame them - he hates him too - but so long as he's got the miracles, the fuckers will deal with it. They want their fix and he'll take what he can get. Everyone goes home miserable.

He makes the mistake of wondering if Morri's enjoying watching him cut loose, if Badb's salivating for the deadly bluster Baphomet's losing himself in - and stumbles when he realizes that he can't pick her figure out of the darkness off-stage.

She's not there.

Baphomet stares too long at the pile of wires and hastily-ditched instruments trying to make it resolve into his Marian, and the whole fucking world grinds to a halt around him. It hits like a punch to the gut.

The crowd gets too brave then - throws insults his way they'd never dare level at him on the floor, bolstered on by the illusion of safety in numbers and his momentary lapse. Baphomet shakes his head, grits his teeth. "Get out the pitchforks," he goads them on, retreating back behind the safety of anger and condescension. Love, hate, it's all the same - they feel enough to give a fuck, and that's all he needs.

"Laugh it up, little boy," a man over by the pool tables yells back - too close to the hanging lights for his own benefit, the dumbass; Baphomet can see his face, knows who dared call him out - "you're on borrowed time."

Fatal fucking mistake. His blood is boiling, heart pounding, fire searing away at his fingertips. "And yours just ran _out_ ," Baphomet growls, throwing a hand up. He doesn't think twice - let them have their killer, if they want him so bad.

The man bursts into flame with the click of his fingers, and Baphomet takes a miserably perverse sort of satisfaction at the screams, the flicker of fear in the man's eyes before he's nothing more than a charred corpse laid out on the filthy floor, but he can't dwell on it. He's yelling out to the rest of these miserable parasites before the body even cools, his hands balled into fists to hide the tremors - he's spiraling out of control and Baphomet doesn't have a fuck left to give. "Anyone else want to test their mortality?"

He treads the boards to the sound of yells and jeers and plays it up, remorseless for the moment, flashing his fangs and scowling down at the rabble. Laughs wickedly to himself when he feints towards the front row and they scatter back, falling all over each other trying to stay out of his way. "That's right, you fuckers," Baphomet gloats, "shut up and pay homage."

Someone throws a bottle and it smashes against the back of the stage, glass shards and shitty beer showering down on him. Baphomet lets his flames bank higher. The front few rows cringe back again. "Too hot to handle?" he mocks them, tossing flames that burst like fireworks and rain sparks down on their heads, sending sections of people ducking and screaming again.

"Get on with it!" someone from the crowd yells. They're lucky Baphomet can't pick them out, his eyes leaking fire from behind his shades and the lights blinding him further. He'd blow this whole fucking place sky high if he didn't need the boost so bad - glances toward the wings again but Morri's not there to tell him to calm down.

Fuck it, he doesn't need her.

A few more bottles get launched his way. Baphomet snags one out of the air and brandishes it like a weapon. "You know what happens when alcohol gets lit?" he snarls, crushing the bottle in his fist and unleashing an explosion big enough to engulf half his arm. "Here's a hint, fuckwads, you _don't_ want me throwing shit back!"

The glass shards digging into his palm only fuel the rage, that awful burning Baphomet's all too eager to give into. He paces like a caged animal, blood pouring down his arm and splattering against the stage. They're all going to regret it - remember this fucking nightmare for the rest of their miserable lives. "One!" he yells, the whole basement going dark around the edges, the crowd churning uneasily.

He's not holding back, doesn't care if this destroys all of them. Baphomet's fucking furious enough to throw caution to the winds - he's dead anyway, why not crave devastation? Anything to get out of his own head, to ease the pressure - but the impulse only winds him tighter.

He's caught in a vice, pulled every which way, strung up and strung out. The world splinters around him in rough, ragged shards. No escape. No salvation.

"Two!" It burns his throat, rips its way out of him. Hard and fast and violent. He can't control it, _can't_ hold back - Baphomet's heart stops for a dizzying moment right before he's dragged over the edge, one split second of clarity for him to search frantically for the Morrigan in the darkness, _save me save me_ , and far too late to bail out now.

He's stripped bare, flayed right down to the bone by his own hand. Baphomet's blood ignites, sets the stage on fire around him - he can't hear the screams of the crowd, can't see them anymore. There's nothing but the pit, burning burning burning. "Three!"

The world is ripped away and he's screaming into the void. He's losing his mind, he's going to die. Oblivion takes them all, rips Baphomet's voice from him, tears him apart in service to the inhuman and inevitable -

" _FOUR!_ "

.

.

He's on his knees, gasping for breath around the apocalyptic revelations that sear him from the inside out, too fucked up to push himself back to his feet. Feels like he's been flayed raw. The crowd is utterly silent - bloody fucking traumatized, with any luck, shaken as badly as Baphomet is. He's glancing towards stage right before he can help himself, looking for reassurance that won't come, choking out her name before he can catch himself.

Fuck.

His aviators are on the floor, and Baphomet snatches them back up, tries to give himself a bit more distance from the stares of the crowd, their eyes boring into him from every angle. The lights are all burnt out, only a few feet in height separating him from the people on the floor. The barrier between them is broken, illusion shattered - _you make yourself vulnerable_.

Fuck - fuck everything. He went too far, gave this shithole more than they deserved and ripped himself to pieces in the process. Fucking rookie mistake.

The sound of glass breaking tears Baphomet from the haze.

Some punk's wielding a bottle - and then punches are being thrown. Blood's being spilled, lips split open. There's an earsplitting scream piercing the silence, and then the noise of the crowd is building to a fevered pitch, crashing in on him all at once. It shakes the building to the foundations, pounds harder and louder than the cheap P.A. system ever did or will again.

It's a fucking riot - they'll tear the place apart.

Baphomet can't take satisfaction in it; this isn't the pleasant, after-gig buzz he'd normally revel in. It's a hard, nasty comedown, and a humiliatingly painful one at that. The senseless _need_ pushing him to deliver is gone, a gaping hole in its place, but he doesn't have time to recover. The crowd may have turned in on itself - divinity spent, Baphomet's of no more use and therefore no more interest - but it's only a matter of time before this mess catches the attention of an actual threat, and he's in no condition to fight.

He staggers back to his feet, all jagged edges just barely held together, and struggles to gather the fragmented mess in his skull long enough to get him out of here. Baphomet clenches his fist tight, relying on the pain of the glass still embedded in his skin to make him sharp.

It's enough. He focuses on the need to run and clicks his fingers; fades out into smoke and shadow and lets it carry him further underground. _Help me. Hide me_. Not the Morrigan's underworld now - Baphomet doesn't know where it'll take him, but it doesn't matter. As long as Baal can't find him, anywhere is good enough.


	2. Chapter 2

He ends up in some utter hole - a long-disused underground line who the fuck knows where.

Doesn't matter.

Baphomet collapses against the wall, still trying to get his head on straight. He's burning, all the energy from that complete mistake of a gig flooding in on him at once, but he's in no state to appreciate it. Just makes him feel twitchy and strung out.

There's a balance. A line to be struck between the personal and the divine. The inspiration, and the fucked up, brutal truth behind it. How many of them saw right through him? Watched, and knew it wasn't divinity that brought him to his knees, heard the rasp in his throat for what it was?

Baphomet drops his head into his hands and groans. He's fucked everything up, _he's_ so fucked up-

"How long do you think it'll take you to burn out without the Morrigan here to hold your hand?" The voice is far too appealing given the circumstances, and still more familiar. Smooth, unhurried - nowhere near as threatening as it should be. Baphomet tries to shut him out, but it's no use. "My guess is not long."

"No one asked you," he growls, fists clenching at his sides before he can fully appreciate the way they ache at the thought, or how insubstantial it feels without the Morrigan's fingers crushed between them. Baphomet should know better, but he can't help marking that hollow ache in his chest any more than he can stop the way his skin prickles with the need to have Morri beside him.

It's pathetic, what he'd give to have her hold his hand for a minute. But the Morrigan won't forgive him for this mess, and Baphomet couldn't face her _before_ Baal decided she'd be acceptable collateral.

"She knew you were there," Inanna continues, far too casually, refusing to let Baphomet bury it. "Why else would she be distracted enough to let Baal grab her?"

There's an undercurrent to Inanna's words that suggests he's doubly at fault, but Baphomet almost wishes he could believe it anyway. If only because it means she didn't give him away, that maybe the Morrigan has some love left for him despite what he's done…

But that kind of wishful thinking raises too many more questions - why wouldn't she _fight?_ \- and Baphomet's trying desperately not to think at all. "Don't you have anything better to do?" he growls.

"Do you?" Inanna crouches down beside him, unbothered, all too-earnest eyes and glittery purple bullshit, "this is your hallucination, after all. I suppose I could go ask Laura how death becomes her, but,"

"Laura?" Baphomet latches on too eagerly; nice to have a momentary reprieve from ' _murderer_ ' and craving Morri like he needs her to breathe, even if he already knows he'll regret going down this rabbit hole as surely as anything that came before. He hasn't seen her since, since -

Inanna taps a finger to the side of his head. "There was a tv on at the bar, not that you paid much attention. _Wanted: one murderous asshole with delusions of godhood_."

"No." Surely he's wrong - Laura can't be - she wasn't one of them; no one had any reason to want her dead. Baphomet should probably care that they're blaming him, but he's stuck trying to wrap his mind around it. If Laura could be killed - could die so young, with so many years left ahead of her - what does that mean for him? For Morri?

He can't resolve the memory of the girl they'd dragged down into the underworld with the idea that she's… gone. Like it's nothing. "No," Baphomet repeats. She was _alive_ \- she was supposed to outlive them all. "Why-"

"Oh, come on now, Baph, don't pretend to care," Inanna chides him. "You said it yourself: a friend is the last thing you ever wanted. She was a curiosity. A plaything. Someone you could impress when you needed your ego stroked."

Baphomet scowls. "Doesn't mean I didn't care." He's annoyed at how petulant he sounds to his own ears, but it stings. Because even if he can't deny the rest, he _did_ care.

Because he sucks at being half as disaffected as he wishes he was, and always has.

"Look on the bright side," Inanna continues, "at least you'll never have to see the look on her face when she inevitably went looking for my killer and found you out. This way, she might have even died believing the best of you."

It's everything he thinks he should have wanted, but gone hollow and bitter. Not a victory at all. She'd been stupid enough to trust him, naive enough to care - to see all of them as more than just divine dispensers of a good time - and look what it'd gotten her.

Baphomet turns away, not feeling guilty so much as utterly lost, eyes burning and throat too tight - but Inanna doesn't stop there. "Maybe that's the fatal mistake. The stars know I tried to appeal to your better half."

Even saying what he is, there's a flippancy to it that gets under Baphomet's skin, makes him wish Inanna would stop treating all of this as a joke. It's not funny. None of it is. "Shut up."

"I wonder if the Morrigan will go the same way, or if she's already realized her faith in you is misplaced… Huh. I wonder how much time she's got left."

It's just a sound of incoherent rage that tears itself from Baphomet's throat in response. He doesn't have the words; all too raw and still dangerously close to falling to pieces. No one threatens the Morrigan, not if they want to -

Inanna laughs, and makes himself comfortable, sitting down beside Baphomet as if they could be friends, as if Inanna existed anywhere but in his head. "Oh, come on, Baphomet. You saw Baal - he's going to make _someone_ pay for what you did to me."

He grits his teeth and tries to tune Inanna out, but it's no use. All Baphomet can see is the memory of that smashed up tunnel, Morri's feathers scattered about like ash. He can't forget it. Can't escape that no matter how far or how fast he runs.

"First you put my blood on her conscience," Inanna muses, as if Baphomet's not grinding the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, trying to burn the thought from his own head, "figures that you'd do the same with the consequences. Some boyfriend you are."

"Go away!" He lashes out blindly, puts his fist halfway through the concrete wall. Knows he's yelling at nothing, that he looks like a fucking psycho. Maybe that's not as far off the mark as he'd like to think. "You don't get to say that to me! You don't get to tell me she's - fuck!"

Inanna watches him for a moment - waits for the flames to recede, for Baphomet to get himself under control and dash the angry tears from his eyes - all with an expression that looks maddeningly akin to pity. Then he cocks his head to the side and says, too gently, "how come you got to kill me?"

"I didn't have a choice."

It's automatic. He can't think about it, can't bring himself to look any closer.

"Yeah, you did," Inanna insists, impossible to ignore. "You chose to kill me. And for what, one more year? That's practically nothing. You're still going to die."

"Shut. Up." His heart is pounding with the reminder, feels like the walls are closing in. Baphomet scrambles back to his feet, shakes out his fist as he paces, and tries to distract himself with the uncomfortable sensation of blood drying across his knuckles. It's no use.

Nine months. He's nearly halfway there, and it's nothing, nowhere near enough time.

"Hey, the dead don't speak, remember? I'm all you, Baph."

Except _he's_ calm, looking on impassively as Baphomet tries not to lose it completely. Each passing second is more time ticking away from him, his mind is racing - Cassy has the most time left; he'd failed once, but - "You don't learn, do you?"

"I don't have a choice!" Baphomet snaps. He's not ready to die, doesn't think he'll ever be, would do _anything_ -

"You really think you can kill again? You're lying to yourself if you thought this would ever end well. Face it, Baph: two more years or twenty, it'll never be enough. You were never going to get out of this alive."

Inanna's words hit too close to home; Baphomet feels like the breath's been knocked out of him. He stands, frozen, and stares at Inanna for too long a time. That awful crushing feeling is back, trapping him in place like a butterfly under glass. He can't breathe, can't fucking _think_ beyond the roar in his head.

"Help."

He goes to click his fingers, but Inanna puts up a hand. "You don't need another voice in your head. Think. You had a choice then, and you have a choice now."

"What choice do I have?" Baphomet asks. "Baal will kill me."

"Better you than the Morrigan."

Baphomet feels the blood drain from his own face, thinks he might have gone lightheaded for a split second. He can't even contemplate that, can't - "No." He backs away from Inanna, shaking his head. "No. You're trying to get me killed."

"I thought we'd established that this is all in your head," Inanna replies with a wave of his hand. "So either you're the one with the death wish, or you care about the Morrigan more than you do having to face your own mortality. Which might be your only redeeming quality at this point - but hey, I'm biased."

"I can't."

He's burnt that bridge to hell and back and it's a fucking death-sentence besides. Baphomet needs her to keep him sane; can't live with her rejection, can't live with her blood on his conscience. There's no way to win.

"She's your only hope, and you know it," Inanna continues. "So you can leave the Morrigan to the rest of the pantheon and try to live without her - though, no offence, I think we both know how that ends - or you can go after her."

He pauses, long enough for Baphomet to really look at him, the mirage already coming apart at the edges.

"You or her." His voice is still utterly serene, but Inanna's eyes light with some shared, sadistic secret, a cruel twist lingering at the corner of his mouth. It looks out of place on him, far closer to an expression Baphomet has seen himself wear. The kind of smirk that accompanies a particularly brutal punch line.

" _No choice at all, now is there?_ "


End file.
